After spending 11 years as a programmer in the computer industry, Peter obtained a degree in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of York in 1997, followed by a PhD on The Proteomic Analysis of Schistosome Egg Secretions in 2001. He then continued to work in the Schistosomiasis Research Group, using both proteomics and bioinformatics techniques to tackle a range of problems in schistosome biology. Immediately before taking up his current position in the Technology Facility, Peter worked for eight months at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge undertaking the initial annotation of the Schistosoma mansoni genome.